Explaining Brazil

Can Brazil's Supreme Court survive an election?

For years, Brazil's Supreme Court picked fights with Congress and the presidency. This month it turned on itself. On September 15, the full court sat for more than seven

Civil war at the Brazilian Supreme Court

Brazil's Supreme Court is facing what may be the worst crisis in its history. Justice André Mendonça unsealed the Banco Master investigation, exposing messages between th

The first surprise of the 2016 election

Two polls released Monday shook the political establishment. Augusto Cury, of the small Avante party, took third place in both: 11% in Nexus's survey, 7.8% in Atlas Intel

What's wrong with the Brazilian Congress

Brazil's 2026 campaign is officially underway, and almost all the attention will be on the presidential race. That's a problem, because power in Brazil is increasingly wo

A visa, a snub, and a reopened wound

The US State Department revoked the visa of Brazil's ambassador to Washington ( https://newsletters.brazilian.report/p/us-brazil-ambassador-viotti-argentina-russia-putin

Brazilian trade: Life after Washington

The US now takes less than 10% of Brazil's exports — the smallest share in decades — and Washington's tariff wall is accelerating a realignment that was already underway.

An imported playbook for Brazil's elections

Senator Flávio Bolsonaro used his turn at Debating Brazil — an event series in which Brazilian presidential candidates present their vision of the country to foreign amba

Flávio Bolsonaro has a few problems to deal with

On this episode of Explaining Brazil, Gustavo Ribeiro, editor-in-chief of The Brazilian Report, talks with James Green, a historian at Brown University, about the fractur

Brazil's crime syndicates are now terrorist organizations

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated the Comando Vermelho (Red Command, or CV) and the Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Command of the Capital, or PCC) as forei

Lula meets Trump in Washington

Editor-in-chief Gustavo Ribeiro sat down with historian James N. Green to unpack Lula's recent meeting with Donald Trump. While the visit yielded no concrete trade breakt

Trouble ahead for Brazil-US relations?

What role will the United States play in Brazil's high-stakes 2026 elections? Join editor-in-chief Gustavo Ribeiro and historian James N. Green of the Brazil Office Allia

Time to investigate Brazil's Supreme Court justices? (preview)

Amid deepening polarization and the judiciary’s growing role in the country’s political life, Brazil’s Supreme Court has become accustomed to being rated poorly by a sign

Brazil's water leverage. And its fault lines (preview)

Humanity has entered what scientists are calling an “era of water bankruptcy.” According to the United Nations University, many critical water systems around the world ar

An indigenous victory against Cargill on the Tapajós River (preview)

Advances in oil exploration and the construction of railways and highways in recent years have shown that, when large infrastructure projects clash with matters of Amazon

Brazilian stocks’ record run (preview)

190,000 points. After a string of record highs that have been piling up since mid-January, the Ibovespa — the benchmark index of São Paulo’s stock exchange, the B3 — surp

Brasília enters an election year on edge (preview)

Brasília is back to work — and the new legislative year has opened with all the familiar rituals: lofty speeches about stability, institutional balance, and dialogue, plu

Banco Master and the Supreme Court: After the glory came the crisis (preview)

As the saying goes, the calm comes before the storm. In Brazil’s Supreme Court, the current crisis came after a period of glory and renown. In September 2025, the Supreme

How the Mercosur-EU deal impacts Brazilian firms beyond exports (preview)

Amid a global context of eroding multilateralism and rising US trade wars, Mercosur and the European Union are trying to create a shared market for more than 700 million

What happened to Brazil-Venezuela relations? (preview)

Lula did not recognize Maduro’s 2024 election win, but his first two terms in office in the 2000s saw him make South American integration a top priority of Brazil’s forei

Trump’s Venezuela play: How it reshapes South America’s risk map (preview)

In Latin America, 2026 quite literally got off to an explosive start. Just before sunrise on January 2, the city of Caracas was violently awoken by the sound of bombs, as